bden, a man with whom no one ever
came in contact without feeling for him the most ardent admiration. At
one time I saw a good deal of him, as it was my habit, at his request, to
call on him each morning at his house in Westbourne Park, to talk over
with him matters connected with the Freehold Land Movement, in which he
took, as in everything that increased human progress, the deepest
interest. As he once remarked half the money spent in gin would give the
people the entire county representation, and besides provide them with
desirable investments against a rainy day. Mr. James Taylor was always
cheered as he showed his hearers how a man who drank a quart of ale a day
engulfed at the same time a yard of solid earth. Land at that time was
to be had remarkably cheap, and great profits were made by the early
investors, and the moral benefit was great. Men learned the value of
economy and thrift, and were all the better for gaining habits of
forethought and self-denial. In our days the societies have become
chiefly building societies, the political need of getting a vote in that
way not being of so much importance as it was then.

In the early days of the Victorian era the workman had no inducement to
save, and he spent his money foolishly because he had no opportunity of
spending it better. The Poor-laws as they were till they were reformed
by the Whigs--a heroic reform which made them everywhere
unpopular--actually offered a premium on immorality, and the woman who
had a number of illegitimate children--the parish rewarding her according
to their number--was quite a prize in the matrimonial market. The old
Poor-law administration became the demoralising agency to such an extent
for the manufacture of paupers that honest wage-earners were at a
discount, while numbers of the rate-paying classes found their lot so
intolerable that they elected to swell the pauper ranks, and thereby much
increased their pecuniary, if not their social, condition. The earlier a
labourer became a married man and the father of a family the better off
he became and the more he got out of his parish. We can scarcely credit
it, yet it is an undoubted fact that under the old Poor-law, if a
labourer was known to be thrifty or putting away his savings, he was
refused work till his money was gone and he was reduced to his proper
level. Even the labourer usually at work received parish pay for at
least four children, and if he worked on the roa